Archives

Blog it, baby

Smart People and Politics

Monday, June 21, 2004

Hard 'C's

I picked up a history of the end of the Roman Republic, called Rubicon, the other day. I have been reading it voraciously, as I always do, but I've noticed something extremely annoying. It seems that around 100 BC, the Romans stopped paying attention to any children who didn't have names that began with a C.

There's Caesar and Crassus, of course, but also Catalus, Catiline, and Caelius. Cicero, Curio, and Cato go along with Clodius and his sister Clodia. Honestly, through the middle of the book, the only major non-C person is Pompey the Great, who is quite easy to remember.